Sublime

In his justly celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin sets forth the idea, now almost commonplace, that the copying and disseminating of, say, a painting robs it of its aura. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique ex

Within major historical periods, along with changes in the overall mode of being of the human collective, there are also changes in the manner of its sense perception.

The here and now of the original constitute the abstract idea of its genuineness.

In principle, the work of art has always been reproducible. What man has made, man has always been able to make again.

as originally pointed out by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin in his seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” is that by removing something from its original context or setting, we kill the sense of awe that we might attach to its uniqueness. Great works of art were once intrinsically a part of their settings.